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I took this weekend off from serious riding to go up to the Gold Country with my husband Roger to visit a group of my college friends. Tom, Brian, Nancy and I were all freshmen in the same dorm at UCSC and I loved them and their weird idiosyncracies and passions. In those very first wide-eyed days of freedom and youth I followed my new friends like a little wet duckling, using them as templates from which to create my own new weird adult persona.

I particularly wanted to impress Tom. I memorized the streets of San Francisco, because Tom was from Marin and knew the City so much better than I did. Brian knew Star Trek trivia, so I memorized star dates for the entire first season (of the original show, duh). Tom was learning Kurdish, which was absolutely a bridge too far, so I didn’t even try to compete on that level (although I did look it up in a book just to stay conversant).

And Tom rode bikes.

Tom rode a Legnano “all-Campy” bike in those days (details have been edited to match Tom’s version of history. Apparently, the bike also had horrid Universal center-pull brakes. If I had known that I probably would’ve just quit trying to impress him). I was fascinated by the terminology of this bicycling  thing and listened raptly, even if, to all intents and purposes, he was speaking Kurdish. But it set a seed in me… long germinating… and when I started getting into cycling myself I was as secretly pleased as I was when I was memorizing star dates. Tom would think I was cool!

In these later years, Tom and I have had a chance to ride a few times, including my very first long ride — the Foxy’s metric century — up in Davis, with Scott. I had just started training up and the idea of going 63 miles was terrifying. But I was riding with two of my two cycling role models — and it ended up being an incredibly fun ride and one of my most prized memories.

Fast forward eight years or so to today. This weekend Tom came out from the Bay Area and the five of us congretated at Brian and Nancy’s house in Angel’s Camp.

Tom still rides despite some harrowing accidents and we both brought our gravel bikes.  He’s proficient at gravel and mountain riding but I never have ridden off the pavement (willingly). He could show me how to do it, and I was kind of looking forward to showing off what a better rider I’ve become since those early days up at Foxy’s.

There’s a gorgeous lake near Brian and Nancy’s house. They know the hiking trails and I looked them up on the map — perfect. They are marked as bike-ridable although unpaved, and I figured Tom and I could go out on a spin while Brian, Nancy, and Roger hiked the same trail.

We studied the map. The trail looked perfect for a starter ride. Scenic, short, what could possibly go wrong?

After what felt like hours of getting people organized, figuring out car and bike logistics, getting loaded up and determining good picnic provisions we got out the door and drove down to New Melones Lake. It really is a spectacular area. Huge. Lots of little fingers and spurs which gave it the same kind of Inland Sea feel as Roger and I experienced in Japan. This was going to be a spectacular ride.

We found Heron’s Point and parked. The road to the Point was somewhat hilly and curvy and I was slightly dismayed when I couldn’t exactly see where the trail was — my image of “gravel riding” being a nice evenly graded path, with minimal climbs and descents. Steady slopes. Predictable. Like…you know, pavement, with sweet curated crunchy little rocks on top.

Brian and Nancy pointed out the trailhead, which went immediately down a hill and then up another one. The trail looked, um, neither flat, nor steady, nor predictable.

We got to the top of the trail and, to be honest, I think Tom kind of eyed the terrain with a little skepticism himself. Afterwards, he confessed that even he thought this looked a little more like it should land more on the mountain bike side of the spectrum than the gravel side.  But, we had committed to this and I was determined to show I was game.  So we walked our bikes down the first unstable, uneven, unridable little hill and muttered to each other that we had to at least get out of sightlines so the others couldn’t see us when we immediately crashed.

And yes. We did soon find out that this was more mountain bike than gravel. The single-track trail had divots and roots and rocks and smoothness and roughness, and it did not end up meandering nicely down by the lake’s edge (as I had imagined) but crawled up and around a rather steep… not cliff exactly… but somewhat intense slope down to the water. The trail was beautiful, but it was nothing like what I envisioned when I agreed to this venture.

It was precarious. I was better climbing up the slopes and just clutched and prayed going down. The grassy slope to our left was beautiful, but littered with sharp rocks as it cascaded down to the water. The trees to our right stretched their gnarly roots across the trail and the recent rains caused sudden dips and erosions to the trail. My bike was handling OK though and I was deeply grateful for the wide tires and my hours of riding experience on it (on pavement). Tom went ahead and I followed his lead when he would unclip or dismount to get through an iffy spot, which was approximately every ten feet.

We were trepedatiously rounding the first point when Tom called out to watch out for a narrow spot where the trail was a bit washed out and a huge root crossed the trail soon after. I was preparing to follow suit and dismount when my front tire hit a large protrusion of rock or root… and I was down.

DOWN.

Thrown off my bike and down the hill. Not all the way down the hill but sliding for long enough to contemplate the last episodes of Beef when they end up tumbling down a ravine. Literally… that’s where my brain went as I scrambled to get purchase and wondered how badly fucked up I was.

I haven’t fallen off my bike in almost 10 years, and that one accident (driving off the beach bike path into the sand because I was rocking out to headphone tunes and spaced) was the only mishap I’ve ever had. Tom’s always said that accidents are inevitable, and I’ve always been secretly proud I’d never had any kind of major one.

Until now. This was me having an accident. I finally stopped sliding down the hill. (To be honest, I probably only slid about 10 inches.) But I dug in and stopped. Tom reached his hand down but I shrugged him off while I sat up slowly and tested out my body parts.

Scraped up bloody knee. My upper thigh super painful under my shorts. Everything working moderately OK. Nothing broken. Helmet good, eyeglass mirror intact… so… except for the knee and probably something on my thigh… I was OK.

“How’s the bike?” I said. (I want to go on record that I did access and execute that old joke even in the midst of my discombobulation.)

Bike was fine. I was fine enough. I grabbed Tom’s hand and he hauled me up.

I looked at my Garmin: we had gone exactly .61 miles.

We assessed. We could limp back to meet the others who were behind us. Or… we could keep walking/riding around the point.  We chose the latter, postponing public humiliation as long as possible, and set off for the rest of the loop.

It was beautiful. And I did get up and ride. Occasionally. My body was jittery and I had a slightly dramatic trickle of blood snaking down my leg, but other than that… I was OK. I rode when things looked safe, and Tom rode ahead of me and then stopped to let me catch up.

At one point I commented that adventures always result in good stories. To which Tom quoted Bilbo: “Adventures are not always pony rides in May.” Which pretty much summed it all up.

We made it back around the loop without getting caught by our friends. To salvage my pride, I suggested we ride on the nice safe paved road for a short bit so my legs could stretch and my body could remember how it was to actually stay upright. We pedealed up a nice litttle grade, then screamed down it, and it was a beautiful thing.

I got sufficiently ooohed and ahhed in the parking lot by our friends and Nancy dug out some antiseptic wipes. I felt great and we had a picnic and it was the perfect end to a non-pony ride adventure.

Did I impress Tom? No.

Did this whet my appetite for mountain biking? Hah!

Did I get a story? Well, obviously.